Interview With The Vampire is the best show on TV right now. Bloody, sexy and dripping with atmosphere, it's taken Anne Rice's classic 1976 novel and brought it back to thrilling life. It's been a while since Rice's take on vampires swept popular culture back in the '80s and '90s; her conception of them as violent, erotic and melancholy has since been replaced by vampires as conceived by Twilight author Stephanie Meyer, who has a gentler, more romantic take. Also her vampires sparkle in the sunlight, rather than burst into flame and die.
No shade to Twilight fans, but I'm definitely enjoying the harder, gayer edge of Louis and Lestat. And I don't have to shade Twilight, because Interview With The Vampire star Sam Reid, who plays the chaotic Lestat, is doing enough of that for everyone. “I want to see crazy, demonic, messed up, tortured creatures," he told Salon. "Like, I want to see my vampires like that, whether I'm watching this or I'm reading it. I don't want to see some glittery vampire who's at odds with themselves and, like, can't go near their human counterpart because they're scared of eating them. I want to see full bloodthirst.”
"That’s why I think this show is for our generation now, as opposed to what ‘Twilight’ was back then. It’s sort of like, these vampires do horrible things practically every day, but we ask you to stay with us. And we see people do horrible things all the time, every single day. And we are forced to stay with them. Which is life."
I'm definitely loving Interview With The Vampire's commitment to its shady, messy, bloodthirsty characters. That said, I think Reid is being a mite territorial about his show, and indulging in some of the Twilight backlash that ripped through the 2000s as the Robert Pattinson movies were coming out. There's more than one way to skin a cat or suck out someone's blood through their neck; these two vampire franchises can coexist. They may have to before long; Lionsgate TV is currently working on a Twilight TV series that may air at the same time as future seasons of Interview With The Vampire.
Interview With The Vampire creator wants to adapt The Vampire Lestat next
But will there be another season of Interview With The Vampire? Creator Rolin Jones has extended his deal with AMC, but there's been no official announcement yet. Plus, the current second season of Interview is set to wrap up the events of Rice's book. Where do you go from there?
Well, quite a few places, since Rice wrote a ton of books in her Vampire Chronicles series. She published The Vampire Lestat in 1985 to rave reviews and huge sales, properly launching the franchise after Interview had become a slow-burning cult hit. The Vampire Lestat dives into the titular antihero's past and establishes a wider vampire mythology, setting the stage for future books like Queen of the Damned.
If Jones gets to make more episodes, that's the book he wants to adapt. "There’s no green light. I can’t talk about it. I can only talk about this: The next book I would do would beThe Vampire Lestat," he told Collider. He also discussed whether this third season would have a different title, since it would move beyond the events of the Interview with the Vampire novel."I have no idea who makes the decisions about why things are titled what they are. I think it’s called The Vampire Lestat. That’s what I think it’s called, so that’s what I would like to make. We’re already pulling from other books. We’ve pulled from The Vampire Lestat. We’ve pulled from The Queen of the Damned. We’ve pulled from The Vampire Armand. We’ve pulled a little bit or at least some seeds from The Body Thief. There’s some stuff from Prince Lestat. We’ve read them. We’re building these things as if they’re all one giant thing."
So if Jones has his way, the story of Interview With The Vampire will continue, but it'll be in a new show called The Vampire Lestat. And if you're familiar with Rice's mythology, you know that would lead right into Queen of the Damned. After the smashing success of Interview, I'm down for all of it.
There's also a wider Anne Rice universe in play that AMC is calling the Immortal Universe. The Mayfair Witches is already on the air, and AMC is working on a show about the Talamasca, the secret society that keeps tabs on vampires, witches, and all the other spooky stuff in Rice's world.
According to Jones, a character from Interview will show up in Mayfair Witches, but there've been fewer connections between the shows than he expected. I'm fine with that; cinematic universes are tricky beasts, and I wouldn't want anything diluting the quality of the base show. Whatever Jones wants to do next within this world, I will be there.
In the meanwhile, there are two episodes left of Interview With The Vampire. The season has been gaining momentum for weeks and I expect the finale to tear out my still-beating heart and eat it.
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